Old Trails on the Niagara Frontier Part 7

The war had brought men of strong character, able to cope with pioneer life; among others, professional men, surgeons, doctors and lawyers: Trowbridge, Marshall, Johnson, and many others. Elliot of Erie was a young lawyer, of whom Mr. Lay had often said, "His word is as good as his bond." Another friend was Hamot of Erie, who had married Mr. Hart's niece. He made frequent visits to his countryman, Louis Le Couteulx. [At whose house, by the way, John Lay and Frances Atkins were married, Red Jacket being among the guests.] At Erie, then a naval station, were the families of d.i.c.kinson, Brown, Kelso, Reed, Col. Christy, and many others, all numbered among Mr. Lay's patrons. Albert H. Tracy came here about that time; he brought a letter from his brother Phineas, who had married Mr. Lay's sister. He requested Mr. Lay to do for him what he could in the way of business. Mr. Lay gave him a room over his store, and candles and wood for five years. Even in those days Mr.

Tracy used to declare that he should make public life his business.

Hart & Lay became consignees for the Astors in the fur business. I well remember that one vessel-load of furs from the West got wet.

To dry them Mr. Lay spread them on the gra.s.s, filling the green where the churches now are. The wet skins tainted the air so strongly that Mr. Lay was threatened with indictment--but he saved the Astors a large sum of money.

Hart & Lay acquired tracts of land in Canada, Ohio and Michigan. To look after these and other interests Mr. Lay made several adventurous journeys to the West--such journeys as deserve to be chronicled with minutest details, which are not known to have been preserved. On one occasion, to look after Detroit interests, he went up the lake on the ice with Maj. Barton and his wife; the party slept in the wigwams of Indians, and Mr. Lay has left on record his admiration of Mrs. Barton's ability to make even such rough traveling agreeable.

A still wilder journey took him to Chicago. He went alone, save for his Indian guides, and somewhere in the Western wilderness they came to him and told him they had lost the trail. Before it was regained their provisions were exhausted, and they lived for a time on a few kernels of corn, a little mutton tallow, and a sip of whisky. Fort Dearborn--or Chicago--at that date had but one house, a fur-trading post. When Mr.

Lay and his guides reached there they were so near starvation that the people dared give them only a teaspoonful of pigeon soup at a time. Nor had starvation been the only peril on this journey. An attempt to rob him, if not to murder him, lent a grim spice to the experience. Mr. Lay discovered that he was followed, and kept his big horse-pistols in readiness. One night, as he lay in a log-house, he suddenly felt a hand moving along the belt which he wore at his waist. Instantly he raised his pistol and fired. The robber dashed through the window, and he was molested no more.

Such adventurous journeyings as these formed no inconsiderable part of the work of this pus.h.i.+ng Buffalo merchant during the half dozen years that followed the burning of the town. Business grew so that half a dozen clerks were employed, and there were frequently crowds of people waiting to be served. The store became a favorite rendezvous of prominent men of the place.

Many a war episode was told over there. Albert Gallatin and Henry Clay, Jackson and the United States banks--the great men and measures of the day--were hotly discussed there; and many a time did the group listen as Mr. Lay read from _Niles' Register_, of which he was a constant subscriber. There were sometimes lively scrimmages there, as the following incident, narrated by Mrs. Lay, will ill.u.s.trate:

There was a family in New York City whose son was about to form a misalliance. His friends put him under Mr. Hart's care, and he brought the youth to Buffalo. Here, however, an undreamed-of difficulty was encountered. A young Seneca squaw, well known in town as Suse, saw the youth from New York and fell desperately in love with him. Mr. Lay, not caring to take the responsibility of such a match-making, s.h.i.+pped the young man back to New York. The forest maiden was disconsolate; but, unlike _Viola_, she told her love, nor "let concealment, like the worm i' the bud, feed on her damask cheek." Not a bit of it. On the contrary, whenever Suse saw Mr. Lay she would ask him where her friend was. One day she went into the store, and, going up to the counter behind which Mr. Lay was busy, drew a club from under her blanket and "let him have it" over the shoulders. The attack was sudden, but just as suddenly did he jump over the counter and tackle her. Suse was a love-lorn maid, but she was strong as a wildcat and as savage. Albert H. Tracy, who was in the store, afterwards described the trouble to Mrs. Lay.

"I never saw a fight," he said, "where both parties came so near being killed; but Lay got the better of her, and yanked her out into the street with her clothes torn off from her."

"I should think you would have helped John," said the gentle lady, as Mr. Tracy told her this.

By the close of the year 1821, although still a young man, the subject of this sketch had made a considerable fortune. Feeling the need of rest, and anxious to extend his horizon beyond the frontier scenes to which he was accustomed, he decided to go to Europe. Telling Mr. Hart to get another partner, the business was temporarily left in other hands; and on February 5, 1822, as narrated at the opening of this paper, Mr.

Lay drove out of town in a crockery-crate, and took his course up the ice-covered lake, bound for Europe.

Recall, if you please, something of the conditions of those times. No modern journeyings that we can conceive of, short of actual exploration in unknown regions, are quite comparable to such an undertaking as Mr.

Lay proposed. Partly, perhaps, because it was a truly extraordinary thing for a frontier merchant to stop work and set off for an indefinite period of sight-seeing; and partly, too, because he was a man whose love for the acc.u.mulation of knowledge was regulated by precise habits, we are now able to follow him in the closely-written, faded pages of half a dozen fat journals, written by his own hand day by day during the two years of his wanderings. No portion of these journals has ever been published; yet they are full of interesting pictures of the past, and show Mr. Lay to have been a close observer and a receptive student of nature and of men.

The reason for his crockery-crate outfit may have been divined. He wanted a sleigh which he could leave behind without loss when the snow disappeared.

Business took him first to Cleveland, which he reached in six days, driving much of the distance on the lake. Returning, at Erie he headed south and followed the old French Creek route to the Allegheny.

Presently the snow disappeared. The crockery-crate sleigh was abandoned, and the journey lightly continued in the saddle; among the few _impedimenta_ which were carried in the saddle-bags being "a fine picture of Niagara Falls, painted on satin, and many Indian curiosities to present to friends on the other side."

Pittsburg was reached March 2d; and, after a delay of four days, during which he sold his horse for $30, we find our traveler embarked on the new steamer Gen. Neville, carrying $120,000 worth of freight and fifty pa.s.sengers.

Those were the palmy days of river travel. There were no railroads to cut freight rates, or to divert the pa.s.senger traffic. The steamers were the great transporters of the middle West. The Ohio country was just emerging from the famous period which made the name "river-man"

synonymous with all that was disreputable. It was still the day of poor taverns, poor food, much bad liquor, fighting, and every manifestation of the early American vulgarity, ignorance and boastfulness which amazed every foreigner who ventured to travel in that part of the United States, and sent him home to magnify his bad impressions in a book. But with all its discomforts, the great Southern river route of 1822 proved infinitely enjoyable to our Buffalonian. At Louisville, where the falls intercepted travel, he reembarked on the boat Frankfort for a fourteen-days' journey to New Orleans. Her cargo included barrels of whisky, hogsheads of tobacco, some flour and cotton, packs of furs, and two barrels of bear's oil--how many years, I wonder, since that last item has been found in a bill of lading on an Ohio steamer!

I must hurry our traveler on to New Orleans, where, on a Sunday, he witnessed a Congo dance, attended by 5,000 people, and at a theater saw "The Battle of Chippewa" enacted. There are antiquarians of the Niagara Frontier today who would start for New Orleans by first train if they thought they could see that play.

April 27th, Mr. Lay sailed from New Orleans, the only pa.s.senger on the s.h.i.+p Triton, 310 tons, cotton-laden, for Liverpool. It was ten days before they pa.s.sed the bar of the Mississippi and entered the Gulf, and it was not until June 28th that they anch.o.r.ed in the Mersey. The chronicle of this sixty days' voyage, as is apt to be the case with journals kept at sea, is exceedingly minute in detail. Day after day it is recorded that "we sailed thirty miles to-day," "sailed forty miles to-day," etc. There's travel for you--thirty miles on long tacks, in twenty-four hours! The ocean greyhound was as yet unborn. The chief diversion of the pa.s.sage was a gale which blew them along 195 miles in twenty-four hours; and an encounter with a whales.h.i.+p that had not heard a word from the United States in three years. "I tossed into their boat," Mr. Lay writes, "a package of newspapers. The captain clutched them with the avidity of a starving man."

Ash.o.r.e in Liverpool, the first sight he saw was a cripple being carried through the streets--the only survivor from the wreck of the President, just lost on the Irish coast.[46]

He hastened to London just too late to witness the coronation of George IV., but followed the mult.i.tude to Scotland, where, as he writes, "the outlay of attentions to this bad man was beyond belief. Many of the n.o.bility were nearly ruined thereby." He was in Edinburgh on the night of August 15, 1822, when that city paid homage to the new King; saw the whole coast of Fife illuminated "with bonfires composed of thirty tons of coal and nearly 1,000 gallons of tar and other combustibles"; and the next day, wearing a badge of Edinburgh University, was thereby enabled to gain a good place to view the guests as they pa.s.sed on their way to a royal levee. To the n.o.bility our Buffalonian gave little heed; but when Sir Walter Scott's carriage drove slowly by he gazed his fill. "He has gray thin hair and a thoughtful look," Mr. Lay wrote. "The Heart of Midlothian" had just been published, and Mr. Lay went on foot over all the ground mentioned in that historical romance. He stayed in pleasant private lodgings in Edinburgh for six months, making pedestrian excursions to various parts of Scotland. In twenty-eight days of these wanderings he walked 260 miles.

Instead of following him closely in these rambles, my readers are asked to recall, for a moment, the time of this visit. Great Britain was as yet, to all intents and purposes, in the eighteenth century. She had few ca.n.a.ls and no railroads, no applied uses of steam and electricity. True, Stephenson had experimented on the Killingworth Railway in 1814; but Parliament had pa.s.sed the first railway act only a few months before Mr.

Lay reached England, and the railway era did not actually set in until eight years later. There is no reference in the Lay journals to steam locomotives or railways. Liverpool, which was built up by the African slave trade, was still carrying it on; the Reform Bill was not born in Parliament; it was still the old _regime_.

Our traveler was much struck by the general bad opinion which prevailed regarding America. On meeting him, people often could not conceal their surprise that so intelligent and well-read a man should be an American, and a frontier tradesman at that. They quizzed him about the workings of popular government.

I told them [writes this true-hearted democrat] that as long as we demanded from our public men honesty and upright dealings, our inst.i.tutions would be safe, but when men could be bought or sold I feared the influence would operate ruinously, as all former republics had failed for lack of integrity and honesty.

His political talks brought to him these definitions, which I copy from his journal:

Tory was originally a name given to the wild Irish robbers who favored the ma.s.sacre of the Protestants in 1641. It was afterward applied to all highflyers of the Church. Whig was a name first given to the country field-elevation meetings, their ordinary drink being whig, or whey, or coagulated sour milk. Those against the Court interest during the reigns of Charles II. and James II. and for the Court in the reigns of William and George I. were called Whigs. A Yankee is thus defined by an Englishman, who gives me what is most likely the correct derivation of the epithet: The Cherokee word eanker [?] signifies coward or slave. The Virginians gave the New Englanders this name for not a.s.sisting in a war with the Cherokees in the early settlement of their country, but after the affair of Bunker Hill the New Englanders gloried in the name, and in retaliation called the Virginians Buckskins, in allusion to their ancestors being hunters, and selling as well as wearing buckskins in place of cloth.

In Edinburgh he saw and heard much of some of Scotia's chief literary folk. Burns had been dead twenty-six years, but he was still much spoken of, much read, and admired far more than when he lived. With Mr.

Stenhouse, who for years was an intimate of Burns, Mr. Lay formed a close acquaintance:

Mr. Stenhouse has in his possession [says the journal] the mss. of all of Burns's writings. I have had the pleasure of perusing them, which I think a great treat. In the last of Burns's letters which I read he speaks of his approaching dissolution with sorrow, of the last events in his life in the most touching and delicate language.

The journal relates some original Burns anecdotes, which Mr. Lay had from the former companions of the bard, but which have probably never been made public, possibly because--in characteristic contrast to the letter referred to above--they are touching but _not_ delicate.

Our Buffalonian encountered numerous literary lions, and writes entertainingly of them. He speaks often of Scott, who he says "is quite the theme. He is constantly writing--something from his pen is shortly expected. I saw him walking on the day of the grand procession. He is very lame, has been lame from his youth, a fact I did not know before."

James Hogg, author of the "Winter Evening Tales," lived near Edinburgh.

Mr. Lay described him as "a singular rustic sort of a genius, but withal clever--very little is said about him."

I have touched upon Mr. Lay's achievements in pedestrianism, a mode of travel which he doubtless adopted partly because of the vigorous pleasure it afforded, partly because it was the only way in which to visit some sections of the country. A man who had walked from Fort Erie to Montreal, to say nothing of hundreds of miles done under pleasanter circ.u.mstances, would naturally take an interest in the pedestrian achievements of others. Whoever cares for this "sport" will find in the Lay journals unexpected revelations on the diversions and contests of three-quarters of a century ago. Have we not regarded the walking-match as a modern mania, certainly not antedating Weston's achievements? Yet listen to this page of the old journal, dated Edinburgh, Aug. 27, 1822:

I went to see a pedestrian named Russell, from the north of England, who had undertaken to walk 102 miles in twenty-four successive hours. He commenced his task yesterday at 1.15 o'clock.

The spot chosen was in the vale between the Mound and the North Bridge, which gave an opportunity for a great number of spectators to see him to advantage; yet the numbers were so great and so much interested that there were persons constantly employed to clear his way. The ground he walked over measured one eighth of a mile. I saw him walk the last mile, which he did in twelve minutes. He finished his task with eleven minutes to spare, and was raised on the shoulders of men and borne away to be put into a carriage from which the horses were taken. The mult.i.tude then drew him through many princ.i.p.al streets of the city in triumph. The Earl of Fyfe agreed to give him 30 if he finished his work within the given time. He also got donations from others. Large bets were depending, one of 500 guineas. He carried a small blue flag toward the last and was loudly cheered by the spectators at intervals.

Nor was the "sport" confined to Scotland. August 4, 1823, being in London, Mr. Lay writes:

To-day a girl of eight years of age undertook to walk thirty miles in eight consecutive hours. She accomplished her task in seven hours and forty-nine minutes without being distressed. A wager of 100 sovereigns was laid. This great pedestrian feat took place at Chelsea.

A few weeks later he writes again:

This is truly the age of pedestrianism. A man has just accomplished 1,250 miles in twenty successive days. He is now to walk backward forty miles a day for three successive days. Mr. Irvine, the pedestrian, who attempted to walk from London to York and back, 394 miles, in five days and eight hours, accomplished it in five days seven and one-half hours.

With men walking backwards and eight-years-old girls on the track, these Britons of three-quarters of a century ago still deserve the palm. But Mr. Lay's own achievements are not to be lightly pa.s.sed over. Before leaving London he wrote: "The whole length of my perambulations in London and vicinity exceeds 1,200 miles."

The journals, especially during the months of his residence in Scotland, abound in descriptions of people and of customs now pleasant to recall because for the most part obsolete. He heard much rugged theology from Scotland's greatest preachers; had an encounter with robbers in the dark and poorly-policed streets of Edinburgh; had his pockets picked while watching the King; and saw a boy hanged in public for house-breaking.

With friends he went to a Scotch wedding, the description of which is so long that I can only give parts of it:

About forty had a.s.sembled. The priest, a Protestant, united them with much ceremony, giving them a long lecture, after which dinner was served up and whisky toddy. At six, dancing commenced and was kept up with spirit until eleven, when we had tea, after which dancing continued until three in the morning. The Scotch dances differ from the American, and the dancers hold out longer. The girls particularly do not tire so early as ours at home. We retired to the house where the bride and groom were to be bedded. The females of the party first put the bride to bed, and the bridegroom was then led in by the men. After both were in bed liquor was served. The groom threw his left-leg hose. Whoever it lights upon is next to be married. The stocking lighted on my head, which caused a universal shout. We reached home at half past six in the morning, on foot.

I have been much too long in getting Mr. Lay to London, to go about much with him there. And yet the temptation is great, for to an American of Mr. Lay's intelligence and inquiring mind the great city was beyond doubt the most diverting spot on earth. One of the first sights he saw--a May-day procession of chimney-sweeps, their clothes covered with gilt paper--belonged more to the seventeenth century than to the nineteenth. Peel and Wilberforce, Brougham and Lord Gower, were celebrities whom he lost no time in seeing. On the Thames he saw the grand annual rowing match for the Oth.e.l.lo wherry prize, given by Edmund Kean in commemoration of Garrick's last public appearance on June 10, 1776. Mr. Lay's description of the race, and of Kean himself, who "witnessed the whole in an eight-oared cutter," is full of color and appreciative spirit. He saw a man brought before the Lord Mayor who "on a wager had eaten two pounds of candles and drank seven gla.s.ses of rum,"

and who at another time had eaten at one meal "nine pounds of ox hearts and taken drink proportionately"; and he went to Bartholomew's Fair, that most audacious of English orgies, against which even the public sentiment of that loose day was beginning to protest. As American visitors at Quebec feel to-day a flush of patriotic resentment when the orderly in the citadel shows them the little cannon captured at Bunker Hill, so our loyal friend, with more interest than pleasure, saw in the chapel at Whitehall, "on each side and over the altar eight or ten eagles, taken from the French, and flags of different nations; the eagle of the United States is among them, two taken at New Orleans, one at Fort Niagara, one at Queenston, and three at Detroit"; but like the American at Quebec, who, the familiar story has it, on being taunted with the captured Bunker Hill trophy, promptly replied, "Yes, you got the cannon, but we kept the hill," Mr. Lay, we may be sure, found consolation in the thought that though we lost a few eagle-crested standards, we kept the Bird o' Freedom's nest.

On July 5, 1823, he crossed London Bridge on foot, and set out on an exploration of rural England; tourings in which I can not take s.p.a.ce to follow him. When he first went abroad he had contemplated a trip on the continent. This, however, he found it advisable to abandon, and on October 5, 1823, on board the Galatea, he was beating down the channel, bound for Boston. The journey homeward was full of grim adventure. A tempest attended them across the Atlantic. In one night of terror, "which I can never forget," he writes, "the s.h.i.+p went twice entirely around the compa.s.s, and in very short s.p.a.ce, with continual seas breaking over her." The sailors mutinied and tried to throw the first mate into the sea. Swords, pistols and muskets were made ready by the captain. Mr. Lay armed himself and helped put down the rebellion. When the captain was once more sure of his command, "Jack, a Swede, was taken from his confinement, lashed up, and whipped with a cat-o'-nine-tails, then sent to duty." The dose of cat was afterwards administered to the others. It is no wonder that the traveler's heart was cheered when, on November 13th, the storm-tossed Galatea pa.s.sed under the guns of Forts Warren and Independence and he stepped ash.o.r.e at Boston.

He did not hurry away, but explored that city and vicinity thoroughly, going everywhere on foot, as he had, for the most part, in England. He visited the theaters and saw the celebrities of the day, both of the stage and the pulpit. At the old Boston Theater, Cooper was playing _Marc Antony_, with Mr. Finn as _Brutus_, and Mr. Barrett as _Ca.s.sius_.

On November 20th he pictures a New-England Thanksgiving:

This is Thanksgiving Day throughout the State of Ma.s.sachusetts. It is most strictly observed in this city; no business whatever is transacted--all shops remained shut throughout the day. All the churches in the city were open, divine service performed, and everything wore the appearance of Sunday. Great dinners are prepared and eaten on this occasion, and in the evening the theaters and ball-rooms tremble with delight and carriages fill the streets.... A drunken, riotous gang of fellows got under our windows yelping and making a great tumult.

A week later, sending his baggage ahead by stage-coach, he pa.s.sed over Cambridge Bridge, on foot for Buffalo, by way of New York, Philadelphia, Was.h.i.+ngton, Pittsburg and Erie.